


The Magician’s Psychosis

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: Psmith was spiffed and Mike was befuddled. This in itself was not an unusual occurrence. The unsightly cove standing on his head in the middle of a grove of trees, however, had something of the eldritch about him. Perhaps it was his wispy hair spread out in the mud like diaphanous roots. Perhaps it was the way his legs kicked and waved with the breeze. Or perhaps it was the crowd of talking animals debating whether said cove was flora or fauna. (Admittedly, it was rather hard to tell at a glance.)“If this is what comes from your Cab-horse Welfare Assurance Project,” said Mike, “next time you can count me out of it.”





	The Magician’s Psychosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> The timeline, surprisingly, is only a few years off — but take it with a grain of salt anyway, because dimension traveling isn’t an exact science.

“Mere surprise, however, was never enough to prevent Psmith talking.” 

\- P. G. Wodehouse, _Leave It to Psmith_

“Some time ago," he said, "—how long it seems! — I remember saying to a young friend of mine of the name of Spiller, 'Comrade Spiller, never confuse the unusual with the impossible.' It is my guiding rule in life.”

\- P. G. Wodehouse, _Psmith, Journalist_

* * *

**Cab-horse Welfare Assurance Project, Day 1**   

_Comrades Psmith and Jackson, chair members of the board, hereby undertake this lofty and meritorious project with the aim of educating our fellow common man, improving the working conditions of the common horse, and lending an air of purpose to the listless summer days of the common schoolboy (i.e. aforementioned Comrades Ps. and J., currently at liberty from the intellectual toil characterizing their days in Sedleigh’s hallowed halls)._

_Armed with educational pamphlets written by yours truly (Comrade Psmith, founding chair member), the Project had an inauspicious start when the first cab-horse ate the first pamphlet. Having digested the eloquent words without comment, said equine proceeded to nibble upon a most elegantly striped pocket square. (Expense item A, attached.) Uproarious laughter on the parts of Comrade Jackson and Comrade Cabby unnecessary, in this correspondent’s opinion. Comments by all parties redacted._

 

**C.W.A.P. Meeting Minutes, Day 2**

_Comrades Psmith and Jackson, chair members of the board, report multiple instances of coarse language, threats of withholding oat rations, and the deplorable use of the whip by no fewer than fourteen passing cabbies. Psmith and Jackson, C. of the B., embarked upon Phase 1: Education via Empathy, and were summarily dismissed on all occasions, with additional infractions of course language, albeit with no threats regarding forfeiture of oats. In one regrettable instance, a flower pot was broken and the Psmith physiognomy temporarily altered. Meeting adjourned post-haste._

**C.W.A.P. Meeting Minutes, Day 7**

_Comrades Psmith and Jackson, chair members of the board (and still, it must be said, the only members) encountered a most amiable cabby and his equally amiable equine, by the appellations of Frank and Strawberry, respectively. Kind words, promises of oats and nary a whip to be seen — most refreshing. Shall attempt to recruit to the cause post-haste._

**C.W.A.P. Meeting Minutes, Day 8**

_Comrades Psmith and Jackson, chair members etc., etc., reunited with the aforementioned amiable cabby and cab-horse under the most peculiar circumstances. Comrades Ps. and J. may never be the same. The lamppost most certainly won’t._

* * *

Despite the hordes of policemen, irate shop-owners and eager onlookers, Mike and Psmith found themselves uncomfortably near the front lines. A willowy looking gent swayed among the wreckage, moaning something that was muffled by the hat bashed over his face. He was drowned out by several choruses of “Now then, what’s all this, ‘ere?” from the policemen and incoherent answers and accusations from the rest. There were already too many people clambering about the shambles of the cab, so Mike turned his attention to the horse. Its eyes were rolling, its flanks heaving, its hooves getting tangled in its traces. And the woman on its back was only making matters worse. 

“Release my charger, slaves!” she bellowed. The horse shied. “Summon me a new chariot lest I lay waste to your pitiful city!”

“I say,” said Psmith almost admiringly, “there is an Amazon if ever I saw one.”

To Mike’s admittedly jaundiced eye, the woman in question was overly tall, overly pale, overly loud and, despite her bare arms, overly dressed for any event short of a conquering Saxon horde. She kept digging her heels into the horse's sides. _Poor brute._  Mike scowled. 

Psmith’s Amazon turned to stare directly at Mike. "Have I not said that I can read the thoughts of men?" she said in a terrible voice. He felt an unaccountable flash of heat followed by a spasm of cold. Her bloodless lips mouthed a word that, afterwards, Mike could never quite recall.

At first, nothing happened. Then everything happened, and all at once, as these things tend to do. The Amazon wrenched a bar off the badly listing lamppost, a policeman's helmet was dented, a pair of children darted in close, followed closely by the concerned cabby, and the horse reared again. Mike darted forward instinctively to help, Psmith’s restraining hand on his shoulder notwithstanding, and then the world just... disappeared.

The first thing he noticed after that was Psmith’s unusual silence. Then the stars and the singing and the Voice, and it was all such a bizarre muddle that Mike barely noticed the dawning light coming from nowhere. He fixated instead on Psmith’s hand, which was still gripping his shoulder, and how it was trembling. Mike hated the idea that he might be trembling too, so he focused instead on his shoes, which is why he was the first to see green grass sprouting from nothingness, and then he felt the firmness of earth under his feet, and then he thought it was like the most perfect cricket pitch imaginable was materializing beneath him.

He was still staring at his shoes and the unbearably bright, tender-bladed grass when the first animals erupted from humps in the ground like pimples on a pubescent chin. 

“I say—" began Psmith in a hushed reverent tone, but his unfinished warning came too late. 

A badger burst out of the ground beneath Mike’s feet. Man met mustelid. Both stumbled. Then Mike slipped on the newly dewy grass and hit his head on a freshly grown stone and the bright new dawn winked out.

When he came to, Psmith was speaking deferentially to a Lion. 

Mike tried to make himself inconspicuous. Unfortunately, he was next to Psmith.

“... and this, sir, is the most estimable Mike Jackson, protector of horses and purveyor of wisdom, and a cricketer of some renown.”

Mike scrambled to his feet, wishing he could conjure one of Psmith’s blithe remarks.

“Be at ease, son of England and so of mine,” rumbled the Lion. For some reason, none of this struck Mike as strange. Perhaps because he had already struck his head, and reached some limit of struckness that his poor brain could not surpass. Or perhaps he had spent enough time with Psmith to take all such strangeness in stride. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the old fellow from the wreck of the hansom cab, the one with a shock of gray hair like tufts of dandelion seeds. He seemed to be unconscious. This may have been fortunate, as he was also upside-down, courtesy of an elephant.

“Roots first!” jabbered a crowd of mammalian, avian and reptilian onlookers. “Branches last!” The man’s coattails flopped in the mud. “Mind the bark, it’s falling off!”

Mike mustered a vague sympathy for the man, despite a strong suspicion that he somehow bore the lion’s share of the blame for the situation. And speaking of Lions... Belatedly, Mike’s gaze met the great golden eyes. He swallowed hard.

“You were not called to be here,” reproved the Lion. 

“Nope,” said Mike with feeling. “Er, sorry about that,” he apologized without quite knowing why.

The Lion’s tail curled. “There are other sons and daughters of your world who were not called to be here today. Yet here they are, and so they shall be of some service.” 

Mike felt the other shoe was about to drop. It was a finely-honed sense he had perfected within the first few weeks of his friendship with Psmith. 

Predictably, Psmith's eyes lit up. "Consider the task tasked, my lord! The quest, quested! The feat, feated! Insurmountable odds, surmounted! Tested in the lordly halls and upon the cricket fields of Sedleigh, Jackson and I are ready for battle!"

Mike looked at the Lion. The Lion looked back. Between them passed a sort of recognition, as fellow travelers will catch each other's eye when two passing trains pause on opposite sides of the platform – a fleeting connection of a shared journey, but with different destinations. In that moment, Mike felt the Lion knew everything there was to know about him. His earlier resentment of his father and initial hatred for all things Sedleigh, the unfortunate business of the red-painted shoe, his reluctance to part ways with Psmith for the holidays, his excitement at the prospect of a week in London followed by swift disappointment at the reality of the city, his joy, after the cramped and noisy city streets, at finding a world so bright and wide … and his fear of utterly falling under the enchantment of that same world.

Mike had never thought of himself as belonging anywhere in particular. But, as lovely as this place was, it wasn't home.

“It is time for you to return home,” the Lion announced. Mike's eyes widened. Could the Lion read his thoughts like the Amazon had? And what about the others — would they all be returned safely to London?

Psmith’s questions varied somewhat, but they had a theme.“What, no quest?” protested the old Etonian. “No higher calling like yon kidlings? No acts of derring-do? No feats of wit, strength and renown?”

The Lion seemed to sigh. “There may yet be a need,” he allowed, “someday. For now, there is only one quest, and its champions are already on their way."

Mike followed the Lion's gaze. In the distance, two children rode astride a magnificent horse. It looked remarkably like the old cab-horse, except for the wings. His mind balked momentarily, but it was hardly any less fantastic than the rest of the afternoon had been. He supposed the Lion had a plan for the Amazon, too — and good riddance.

Speaking of which… “What about him?” asked Mike reluctantly, pointing at the bedraggled old man, who was now at least planted upright. An elephant and a beaver were assiduously building and filling a small pool to sustain him. 

Psmith brightened. “Yes! Let us return him to his native shores. We promise to water him twice a week.”

The Lion rumbled, considering. “The magician must be sent back in any case. Very well. It can do no harm, and may yet do some good.”

The magician awoke, made a noise like a cat whose tail is trod on by a recently shod horse, and hid his face in his hands while the gathered animals made encouraging noises. “Bit of a wet weekend, that one,” Psmith commented privately to Mike, “but one must make allowances for his venerable age.”

“Ven’rable my foot,” opined the cabby, drawing near. “He was shouting like to waik the ‘ole town, like a bleedin’ — pardon me, sir — like a bloomin’ circus.”

The Lion chuckled. “Walk with me,” he said to the cabby. “Let us talk.”

Psmith watched the pair leave with an aggrieved air. “I wanted to ask him about Ptolemaic philosophy and the physics of interdimensionality,” he said regretfully. “That lion seems like the kind of fellow who would know.”

Mike had more pressing and more practical concerns. “What about us?” he asked. “How are we supposed to get back, and what are we supposed to do with him when we get there?” He jerked a thumb at their new charge. “Who is he, anyway?”

“The boy called him Uncle Andrew,” mused Psmith, “and so shall I. Overly familiar, you say? Perhaps, perhaps, but ‘Mister Andrew’ puts one in mind of a member of parliament or some such dignitary, and... well. I would not wish to wound the gentleman’s dignity by calling attention to discrepancies in the parallels.”

Mike didn’t see how Uncle Andrew’s dignity could suffer much more than it already had, but he let Psmith take the reins of the conversation, seeing as how he had the bit already between his teeth, metaphorically speaking. (Psmith was always speaking metaphorically. Mike fancied he was getting rather good at making sense of it.)

Then Psmith said, “I believe the Badger wishes to convey his regrets and regards.” 

Mike drew a blank.

“Dreadfully sorry,” piped the Badger, peeking out from behind Psmith’s no-longer-quite-so-crisply-pressed trousers. “About bumping into you, that is. I’ve never been born before. Makes one frightfully clumsy.”

“It happens to all of us,” managed Mike. He was reasonably certain of that much, although he’d always entertained a vague image of Psmith springing fully formed from the head of Zeus, spouting philosophy from the very first breath.

“You hear that?” said the Badger proudly. It turned its head to shout back at the crowd of other animals. “The Jackson says we’ll all be born under someone’s feet sooner or later! You lot had better start practicing your apologies.”

Another budding philosopher. Mike rubbed his head absently, wondering why it didn’t hurt more.

“Sooner or later,” repeated the Badger sagely, “it happens to all of us.”

“Er,” Mike replied, exercising his customary eloquence.

Psmith, who had ambled away at some point in the discourse, had meanwhile engaged an elephant in conversation and had managed to convince the prodigious pachyderm to cease its attempts at irrigation. “Comrade Jackson!” he called, beaming. “Come meet the future farmers of Narnia!”

“Excuse me,” Mike muttered to the Badger. Narnia? _That’s bloody well not in Shropshire._ Not that there was much doubt about that. Nothing this exciting, he was sure, had ever happened in Shropshire.

Not that he would admit as much to Psmith. There was such a thing as giving a fellow a little too much headway, after all.

“Comrade Jackson, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Comrades Beaver, Elephant, Bulldog and Jackdaw.” Psmith nodded to each animal in turn. “They are a merry band, yet single-minded in their dedication to a singularly worthy cause.”

Mike raised an eyebrow.

“Brandy,” said Psmith with a beatific smile.

“... _brandy?”_

“With a capital letter, if you please, dear comrade. For it is thus that this worthy fellowship has christened Andrew, formerly known as Uncle. He waxes eloquent on brandy, and as it is a day of names and new beginnings, Brandy they have named him!” Psmith struck a pose. The Jackdaw cheered. “This is the fourth joke,” Psmith assured the bird in an aside, “or the fifth. I have rather lost count.”

“Brandy Andy,” mused Mike, who was beginning to wonder if a Badger would sprout from the lump on his head. “Could be worse.”

“Worse!” burst out Uncle Andrew, who was now quite conscious and quite red in the face. “You foolish boys, we are surrounded by rabid beasts and about to be eaten! I have been buried alive! Robbed and maligned! Harassed and harangued!” He spewed exclamation points like spittle. The Jackdaw looked on in awe. “And at my age!” Uncle Andrew finished, his voice near to breaking with emotion.

“Yes, that must be considerable,” said Psmith gravely. “But can you not see that these gentle beasts have only your well-being at heart?”

The Elephant trumpeted agreement. The Beaver slapped her tail, spraying Uncle Andrew with mud (although to be honest, he was already so thoroughly dirtied and disarrayed that it was rather hard to tell the difference). The Jackdaw cackled about the sixth joke, and the Bulldog puffed his chest out with pride.

Uncle Andrew muttered a word that the boys should not have known, but of course linguistic studies were the very backbone of a school such as Sedleigh. 

“What did it say?” asked the Elephant.

Psmith cleared his throat delicately. “It — that is, he — compared me — that is, our august company, to a certain excrescence... that is, a certain function at which bovines are particularly prolific—”

“— it’s another word for brandy,” interjected Mike, rather desperately.

“Good old Brandy!” cried the Bulldog, butting up against Uncle Andrew’s knee fondly. 

“Good doggie,” he whimpered.

The Bulldog snorted and backed away. “I object to that very strongly,” he said.

Uncle Andrew flinched. 

“I do believe,” Psmith said thoughtfully, “that good old Brandy — I mean, of course, the venerable Uncle Andrew — cannot comprehend our furred and feathered and four-legged comrades.”

The Elephant sniffed disdainfully. Psmith’s usually unruffled hair ruffled in the sudden breeze. “We’re speaking perfectly clearly,” she harrumphed. “ _He_ is the one talking nonsense.”

“Don’t insult poor old Brandy!” cried a Bear, drawn by the commotion. “He can’t help it if Aslan didn't make him speak. Can you, Brandy?” He gave Uncle Andrew a mighty clap on the shoulder.

Uncle Andrew sat down abruptly in the mud and wailed.

“Don’t lose your head,” said Mike severely.

“That’s right!” cheered the Badger. Their little crowd was growing larger by the minute. “You can get underfoot, that happens to everybody. But don’t lose your head!”

Mike wished the Lion would come back and restore some sense to the proceedings. Instead, who sallied forth into the conversational void but Psmith. Psmith the fearless! Even the Jackdaw fell silent in witness to the Old Etonian’s eloquence.

“Friends of Narnia,” he declared, “I bring solemn news. Your beloved Brandy — the mascot, as it were, of the burgeoning agricultural community — is leaving. Do not be dismayed!” he entreated — too late, for the Elephant was already blowing her nose into Uncle Andrew’s coattails. “Parting brings such sweet sorrow! Too well I know that this sundering of souls must pain you even on this most joyous day. But take heart, for Comrade Jackson and I are to accompany dear old Brandy back to the land from whence we came, where I am sure he will remember you most fondly.”

Mike coughed and inhaled a floating dandelion seed. The Jackdaw stirred but, catching some of the moment’s solemnity, refrained from further jocularity. Tears gathered in Mike’s eyes from a similar effort, or perhaps from the dandelion fluff. Cause and effect can be delicate things to unravel in cases of great emotion.

“What is he raving about?” pleaded Uncle Andrew. “And why are they tormenting me? I’ve done nothing wrong! I am but a humble magician. It’s that nephew of mine, I tell you. He’s the rascal who started all this!”

Any sympathy Mike had felt for the magician evaporated.

“I suppose the boy conjured that Amazon out of thin air?” Mike said scornfully.

“Amazon? Is that a type of food?” The Bear took his sticky paw out of his mouth just long enough to inquire.

Uncle Andrew laughed shakily. “Do you mean the young lady? Most spirited, most distinguished visitor from, ah, from...”

“Charn,” rumbled the Lion. “A cursed land, as the Witch herself is now cursed. Let its name pass into oblivion.”

Oblivious of the Lion’s true words, Uncle Andrew nonetheless quailed at the tone. He flung himself at Mike’s feet. “Don’t let him eat me!”

Mike stepped back in disgust.

“Don’t lose your head,” scolded the Badger.

“Peace, dear ones,” said the Lion. He shook his mane, and Mike suddenly  _felt_ the peace of which the Lion spoke. Like the sun shining on the cricket lawn, or the warmth of the hearth and tea on the stove, or even the coziness of the study he shared with Psmith. A longing such as Mike had never known flushed like a fever from head to toe.

“Please, sir,” said Mike boldly, “may we go now?”

The Lion bent his shaggy, golden head. “You may. And a little of Narnia shall go with you.” Mike didn’t know what that was about, but Psmith had a suspiciously knowing air about him.

The interrogation would have to wait.

The Elephant blew her nose again, and the Bear wiped his eyes with his sticky paws. The Badger kept repeating platitudes that only he understood, the Bulldog kept trying to get the other animals to line up for proper fanfare, and the Jackdaw hid his head under his wing.

Only Uncle Andrew was unmoved by the farewells. “I seem to have lost my eyeglass,” he complained. After a brief but understandable hesitation, Psmith gallantly proffered his own.

“Are we going somewhere?” asked the magician, squinting through the borrowed monocle.

“Home,” grunted Mike with a sideways glance at the unusually despondent Psmith. _And it’s about time, too._

The old man started patting his pockets. “But the rings—” he said weakly.

“You shan’t be needing them,” said the Lion. Uncle Andrew winced and covered his ears. “And I advise you to stay well away from such crude magics.”

At that, Psmith perked up. “Are there other philosophies of magic, then?” 

Mike growled in exasperation, and Uncle Andrew inched away. Mike yanked him back by the elbow. 

Then he blinked. And blinked again. London hovered before his eyes like a mirage that refused to disappear.

They were back.

And that was when the trouble _really_ began.

“Ere, now!” cried the policeman in desperation. “What’s all this?”

“What’s all what?” asked Psmith quite reasonably, with a genteel gesture at the utter absence of wrecked hansom cab, maddened cab-horse and lunatic Amazon.

The policeman gaped. Several shopkeepers shouted in incoherent indignation. Newspaper boys shouted more loudly and incoherently with glee. Mike felt a headache coming on, and he couldn’t justly blame it on the Badger.

“We must unto the breach, Comrade Jackson.” Psmith’s voice was grave. “We seem to have returned at the very moment of our departure, if not before; ergo, when the others return — no matter how long their quest may take! — they could arrive at any moment. Shall they too be faced with a bevy of unanswerable questions, like barbed arrows flung by a barbarian horde? I hear it now! Who, what and when? Why, wherefore and how? It is enough to make the most stalwart adventurer quail! Shall they arrive, triumphant, only to be cut down in their prime by London at her most bloodthirsty?”

“And you told me not to lose _my_ head,” Uncle Andrew muttered sourly. The soot-choked London air seemed to revive him. 

But Mike had seen something neither old Etonian nor old magician had noticed. In the time it took Psmith to expound, the two children whose fate he was bemoaning had reappeared. Their faces were bright, determined and not a little anxious. With a flash of insight Mike could only attribute to a likely concussion, he deduced that their quest was not yet complete. The boy and girl crept towards the gate of a house.

“We’ve got to draw everyone’s attention,” he hissed to Psmith. “Now!”

Psmith nodded gamely. “ **Behold!** ” he shouted, drowning out the bleat of protest from Uncle Andrew. “Behold the Maestro of Magic, the Paragon of Prestidigitation! Did you fortunate citizens know upon waking from your cozy beds this morning that you would witness such marvels?” Psmith became more animated as he warmed to his theme. He kept reaching for his monocle, starting every time he touched his vest pocket and found it empty. Uncle Andrew kept a jealous grip on the loaned eyeglass, undoubtedly getting smudges all over it.

The magician did not particularly present the appearance of a maestro, Mike thought critically. But of course Psmith had taken that, too, into account.

“See how this Illustrious Illusionist has transformed his own appearance beyond all recognition!” Psmith almost managed to hide his wince at the state of Uncle Andrew’s torn, muddied clothes. Any remaining trouser creases had been thoroughly mangled indeed beyond all recognition. “What about the cab, you ask? Disappeared! The horse? Dematerialized! The lovely assistant? Yes!” he enjoined the crowd, which had begun to believe, not to regress into incredulity at this latest enumeration. “The spirited lass who did seem to terrorize the town is the magician’s lovely assistant — and see how she  has been utterly vanquished — nay, vanished!”

Psmith was clearly starting to enjoy himself. Mike gave into the natural inclination to enjoy the spectacle too, but not before giving a furtive nod to the boy and girl inching through the gate. 

Uncle Andrew was oblivious. His haunted visage had begun to clear. His chest puffed out with pride.

 _The old fool actually thinks he did it._ Mike shook his head in disbelief.

“Merely a trifle!” Uncle Andrew began to boast. Mike elbowed him rather more brusquely than was strictly necessary. The old fraud doubled over in a ploy for sympathy. A smattering of applause broke out in response. 

He bowed again, with a flourish. A little too much of a flourish, actually — the swing of his coattails spattered mud on the onlookers.

Psmith hurried to reclaim center stage. “You, there! Yes, you sir — Comrade Constable.”

The policeman with the dented helmet looked around hesitantly, and then lurched forward when a well-wisher shoved him in the back. “What’s all this?” he asked weakly.

“Is there a law against demonstrating sleight of hand for entertainment of the masses?” asked Psmith. 

“No, sir, but—”

“Aha!” Psmith thrust a finger in the air. The crowd looked on eagerly. Uncle Andrew waffled between the disapprobation of the policeman and the adulation of the crowd, slouching and pushing out his chest in turn so that he resembled an accordion, squeezing and stretching and wheezing all the while.

“Then you come to lend expert testimony, unassailable eyewitness to the veracity of the vanishing!” Psmith shook the policeman’s hand almost vigorously enough to dislodge the battered helmet from where it was stuck over one eye.

“Aye, sir — I mean, no, sir — ‘ere, now, I object to this very strongly!” the policeman sputtered. Mike was forcibly reminded of the Bulldog.

“All will become clear,” Psmith soothed. Mike doubted that very much, but the coast was clear so he gave his pal the thumbs-up.

Psmith never batted an eye, but a certain tension left his mien. He reached for Uncle Andrew’s arm. After a brief struggle, youth prevailed and Psmith held the magician’s grubby hand up in a boxer’s victory salute. “The cry rings out through London: even the constabulary is confounded!” 

“I am not—” protested the policeman. His voice was lost in the cheers of the crowd. 

The more the policeman scowled, the more cheerful Uncle Andrew became.

 _What if he gets up to his old tricks?_   Mike wondered suddenly. Whatever they were, they had clearly caused a good deal of mayhem.

“What about my furs?” shouted a shopkeeper, seemingly reading Mike’s mind. (After today, he’d hardly be surprised.) “And my jewels that scarlet woman stole?”

In answer, Psmith produced a shower of gold from his pockets.

Mike wondered if the Lion had intended all this, or if Psmith defied all prediction.

“Blimey!” whispered the policeman.

“There’s more where that came from!” cried Uncle Andrew. “I have just returned from a magical land where gold grows from the ground!”

The audience started to applaud.

“Quite the act,” said the reedy jeweler in reluctant admiration, even as he swept up his recompense from the cobblestones. His pockets bulged.

Mike marveled that Psmith had managed to keep from jingling all this time. It was a wonder that the magician’s magnificent nose hadn’t sniffed out the goods before now.

Uncle Andrew lunged for the glittering pile. Mike stuck out a strategically placed foot and the magician careened into Psmith instead. “Yes,” said the latter jovially, “a magical land and magical gold! Are these not the stuff of legend, of myth and lore time out of mind? See how skillfully the master magician conjures another reality in our minds!” He winked at Mike, who began to feel optimistic. Maybe Psmith could really pull it off.

“But ‘ere, now,” said the policeman, coming to his senses. “This is all well and good, but what about me helmet? Assault and battery, that is!”

Psmith’s lofty brow furrowed with the weight of these new accusations. “Assault?” he asked. “By whom?”

“Not by me!” Uncle Andrew interjected before Mike could step on his foot. “I was in the cab, remember?”

“It was the girl!” one of the newspaper boys shouted. “The toff on the horse!”

The crowd snickered and the policeman turned red. “She tore the crossbar off the lamppost!” he cried. “See? It’s still missing, ain’t it?”

Psmith threw a friendly arm around the policeman’s shoulders. “Are you sure that’s how you want your report to read?” he asked earnestly. “You were struck on the head and felled like a tree by a mere slip of a girl?”

Mike nearly choked.

“But she — the lamppost —” The policeman’s face purpled like a ripening plum. “If that was another of your tricks,” he yelled, threatening Uncle Andrew with his club, “I’ll take you in!”

“Nothing of the sort,” soothed Psmith. “Why would an illustrious illusionist wish to injure his most ardent admirers? But a crime has been committed here — yes! A crime, I say! When weakened welds and malleable metals strike down one of our most vaunted, most commendable, most ubiquitous police force, something must be done! When the mere touch of a hand by a mere wisp of a girl is sufficient to break the bonds of industry, someone must be held to account!” Psmith marched the policeman down the street. “Call out the ranks! Inspect every lamppost, every flagpole, every rail! No more citizens must come to harm because of weakened iron or shoddy metalwork!” Psmith gave the policeman a gentle push. “Call the city engineers,” he suggested, “and the manufacturers, and Parliament. No expense is too great to ensure public health and safety.”

Mike was never quite sure how Psmith managed to disperse the crowd. He himself had his hands full with Uncle Andrew. Either Narnian air had invigorated the magician despite himself, or he was an unusually sprightly old fellow. One minute he was rushing after the furrier; the next, cajoling the newspaper boys into reporting the incident to their editors. Then he was up the steps and into the house and into the brandy before Mike could latch onto his elbow.

Psmith sauntered in later, eschewing the snifter for a glass of cold lemonade proffered by a distracted aunt.

Whose aunt, Mike didn’t know. But she had an auntly air about her — a true son of England could always tell these things.

She pinched Mike’s cheek as she walked by. “Are you more friends of Digory’s?” There were tears in her eyes. “So sweet of you to come over. His mother is feeling so much better today, I can’t hardly understand it, but it’s a miracle.”

 _Or magic_ , Mike thought. Or was it the same thing, really?

“Andrew,” the aunt snapped, her voice sharpening, “you look like something the cat dragged in. Go and clean up before Mabel sees you like this!”

The unknown aunt bustled out. Uncle Andrew hunched deeper into his dressing gown. Mike peered out the window into the back yard, where a tiny tree was growing and the two children were planting something shiny.

It was none of his business, but Mike noted the spot. Just in case.

“Hadn’t we better go?” he asked Psmith in a low voice.

“Why? We only just got here, you know.” Psmith was prowling around the magician’s study while said scholar was busy burying his considerable nose in the brandy. Mike had a strong urge to call the man by his new nickname, but thought he’d better not. There might be just enough real magic left in the old coot to do some more damage. 

And besides, Mike was enjoying the silence.

He watched the boy — Digory, presumably — and girl finish their reverse excavations out of the corner of his eye. He remained slouched in front of the window until he was sure they’d gone. No good could possibly come of Uncle Andrew knowing where they’d hidden whatever magic trinkets had started all this, Mike was sure. Not to mention Psmith, who would probably go traipsing about other worlds without so much as a by-your-leave.

Eventually Mike managed to pry Psmith out of the magician’s study. Uncle Andrew was still muttering to himself (“at my age” figured prominently in his discourse, as did “dem fine woman” and “maestro of magic”). He took no notice of their departure.

That night, Mike dreamed of fresh grass and winged horses and other fanciful things.

The next night, the dreams repeated. And the next. Each time, however, they grew fainter and dimmer. Psmith said nothing, but his drawn face told a similar story.

Their sojourn in London was nearly over when Mike sneaked out early one morning. (Truth be told, it was not terribly early, but Psmith believed in restoring one’s energies as thoroughly as possible, and as a consequence never rose before elevensies.) He found his way back to the house, which was conspicuous only because of the lamppost guarding its entryway. Still missing one arm, it shone like a beacon to Mike. Its base was lovingly wrapped in yellow police tape.

Mike’s conscience twinged only slightly as he slipped through the gate and dug. Surely, he thought, Digory and the girl must have buried... whatever it was they had buried... to keep it away from Uncle Andrew. By removing... whatever it was... even further, he would only be aiding the cause. 

He dug in the earth with his bare fingers and stopped when he found a handkerchief. Carefully he unrolled the small bundle. Two rings, one green and one yellow, winked up at him, sparkling in the sunlight. Their absence would probably go unnoticed for years. Maybe decades.

He left a note just in case.

* * *

In Narnia, UNcle Andrew’s missing but not unforgotten monocle glinted in the light of the newly born sun. Over the course of mere days, moss and grass respectfully grew around it, leaving a circle of bare earth with the monocle twinkling in the center. When it finally sprouted crystalline branches of its own, they soon bore fruit: small, perfectly round and flat berries that were lovely to gaze upon but not very good to eat. They winked in the sun and chimed softly in the breeze, and reflected back the sparkles of the river that wound beneath its clear-barked boughs.

If the eyeglass-tree still stands, it has been lost to history and the still swiftly-growing brambles. But to this day, the Dwarves of Glasswater remain unparalleled in the art of glassblowing and the crafting of stained glass windows. 

As for Psmith, his name too was sadly lost to history. But old Narnians still call to mind a line attributed to Trundle, Grandson of the First Badger: “Don’t get lose your head when you get underfoot. It happens to all of us.”

And what about Uncle Andrew, you ask? Well, he certainly never forgot his adventures, but his pride and his memory played tricks on him over time. He was known to reminisce about the “dem fine woman” who nearly stole his heart — and to curse some “dem fool fellow” named Smith who stole his gold. Hardly anyone paid any attention to him, except for his doctor, who made sympathetic noises and prescribed a nerve tonic. The physician kept a private log of the magician’s ramblings — amusing anecdotes about rings, fairy dust, lions, elephants and that sort of nonsense — and daydreamed about publishing them in an academic journal. He had just the title for it, too: _The Magician’s Psychosis._  

* * *

**Cab-horse Welfare Assurance Project, Closing Meeting Minutes**

_Comrades Psmith and Jackson, founding members, etc., etc., bid a fond farewell to London and its more eccentric denizens and depart for the hallowed halls of Sedleigh with the assurance that their noble pursuit has done some small good in this world (and possibly elsewhere). Good old Strawberry and his cabby had their happy ending, as did the boy Digory, his friend (whose name, after much investigation, is discovered to be Polly; previous entries to be edited post-haste), his nameless aunt and newly healthy mother Mabel._

_Comrades Ps. and J. trust that good old Brandy will bear up somehow._

_The old hallowed halls will seem less golden, the fabled cricket pitch less green, the sporting games youths play less enthralling, after our Narnian journey. But as we Comrades close the book on this chapter of the C.W.A.P., we place our hopes for livelier days in our own companionship, and in other philosophies of magic._

_And perhaps in the contents of the handkerchief Comrade Jackson thinks he has surreptitiously concealed in his jacket pocket._


End file.
